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From a card game designed to encourage literacy among kiwi kids, to colourful woollen shoes, and even an automated pest trap to protect native birds, the very best in design for 2016 has been announced.

The Best Design Awards is organised by the Designers Institute of New Zealand and recognises the strongest work produced in eight categories - spatial, product, graphic, moving image, interactive, best effect, public good and the Nga Aho Award, a category showcasing multi-cultural design collaboration.

The supreme winner in each discipline is awarded the Purple Pin and then there are Gold Pins, plus silver and bronze awards in different categories.

Designers Institute chief executive Cathy Veninga said: "The Best Design Awards celebrate not just the designers but their clients who have used design to achieve better outcomes for their businesses, their products, and the end users.

"Our design studios keep pushing boundaries with their eye for craft, ideas and innovation. Winners of the Best Design Awards become part of New Zealand's proud design history."

Four designers with Hawke's Bay links featured in the awards.

David Trubridge was awarded Gold Pin for his lighting design, the Navicula Light.

At the base of the entire oceanic food chain are the Diatoms, living out of our sights in an underwater universe. This formed the inspiration behind the Navicula Light.

The skeletal segmented form is crafted through pieces of CNC-cut bamboo plywood, clipped together with simple nylon push clips. An LED strip is concealed behind a specially designed plywood lighting bar, designed with clever joint detail to make shipping a breeze.

Makiko Smith and Peter Tang were also part of the design team with Mr Trubridge.

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Napier restaurant Bistronomy, designed by Unit Design, received a silver award in the hospitality category.

The design by Zoe Chisholm, Max Parkes and Isaac Scott, draws on Chef James Back' Scandinavian culinary leanings, where meticulous craft and experimental techniques are applied to simple foraged ingredients.

The design marries form and function using panels of dowel and slats to create a canopy of timber and vine that doubles as an acoustic baffling system.

The custom-designed ceramics, furniture and over-bar lighting add to the fitout's palette of bespoke, hand-crafted ingredients which merge to create a distinctive dining experience.

David Howell, formerly of Havelock North, is the president of DHD Architecture + Interior Design in New York City. The company was awarded a Gold Pin for its residential interiors in a Brooklyn townhouse and a silver award for a loft.